


I Carry Your Heart

by noblydonedonnanoble



Category: Doctor Who RPF
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-11-26
Updated: 2013-05-09
Packaged: 2017-11-19 14:11:24
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 15
Words: 14,294
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/574106
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/noblydonedonnanoble/pseuds/noblydonedonnanoble
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>“…here is the deepest secret nobody knows<br/>(here is the root of the root and the bud of the bud<br/>and the sky of the sky of a tree called life;which grows<br/>higher than soul can hope or mind can hide)<br/>and this is the wonder that’s keeping the stars apart</p><p>i carry your heart(i carry it in my heart)” (E. E. Cummings)</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Prologue

                “I’ve always wondered why people pursue affairs,” Catherine remarked one day.

                She and David were relaxing in her trailer during a break, and while they usually were careful to keep conversations light and easy, he did his best to take the abrupt subject change in stride. “Boredom? The sense of danger? Bragging rights?”

                “Bragging rights…” she said slowly. “But if you’re going about telling everybody that you’re having an affair, it’s not going to last very long, is it?”

                He laughed genially. “I never thought of it that way. I s’pose you would just be better at carrying out an affair than I would.”

                Catherine wondered why he said it as though it was such a genuine compliment, but instead of questioning him, she just smiled and shook her head. “No. I don’t approve of such things. I would never be a part of an affair, on either end.”

                “Too much self-respect, yes?”

                “Exactly. I’ve got self-respect.”

                David’s cheeky grin made her fidget. She felt as though he knew something about herself that she didn’t know, a feeling which she got around no one else. Not even Twig understood her so well, and it was unsettling.

                It was not the only reason she found David’s presence unsettling.

                On some occasions, he made her question her self-respect. And Catherine really did not like questioning herself, especially where that was concerned.


	2. Chapter One

                When the real problems with Twig started, David was the one she went to. Most people told her that she could talk to them, use them as a shoulder to cry on. David was the only one who expected nothing from her. He didn’t bother with assurances and “I’m here for you”’s, and that’s why she started turning to him every time things got a bit too rough. She could call or show up at his door at all hours of the day, and he’d welcome it. No questions asked (directly).

                He never asked Catherine about Twig. If he came up in conversation, it was a subject they quickly glazed over in favor of something more pleasing. David seemed to have such a complete lack of interest in her troubles that she took to thinking of him as a single ray of sunshine in an otherwise dreary London.

                “Why are you always so willing to take me in?” she asked him once. On that particular occasion, she’d called at 9:30 at night, asking if she could come by for a few minutes. What was supposedly going to be “a few minutes” had become four hours, and Catherine and David were sitting on his sofa, watching but not _watching_ television. He had been drinking slowly but steadily over the past couple of hours, and she was on approximately her fifth glass of cranberry juice (“just cranberry juice,” he had assured her).

                David gave the question a few moments of thought (more for show than because it was necessary to form an answer). Clearing his throat, he said, “Well, you’re my best mate. And I feel that, y’know, I’ve never really had a woman best mate before—one who I’m not shagging, at least—so I should do my best to be there for you. ‘Cause that’s what best mates do.”

                Somehow, when he said that it didn’t bother her like it did with everyone else. Despite that, she punched him gently in the arm. “I think that’s the beer talking, David.”

                “Oi, I take offense to that!” He grabbed her hand and squeezed it. “I care about you, Cath. Really.”

                It was so easy to read every expression on his face, and Catherine kind of wanted to call him out on this one in particular… When it came right down to it, she searched out his company because unlike everybody else, he wanted her around. That was clear as day on his face.

                But instead of pointing this out, she scooted closer to David on the sofa and wrapped her arms around him tightly. “I’m lucky that you consider me your best mate,” she sighed.

                “I know…” he said with a grin, pulling her into a hug as well.

                There was no time for Catherine to even glare at him; he pulled her closer and she adjusted her position so that she was leaning on him, his arms around her waist, as he said, “You know I’m teasing.”

                “Of course.” She more agreed because she knew how much he wanted her to believe him, not because she really did.

                David could tell. His grip around her waist slackened. “Look at me, Catherine.”

                Too stubborn to actually turn and face him, she simply turned her head in his direction. “Yes?”

                In such a situation as this, there were many things that David could have said. He could have once again assured Catherine of her importance in his life. He could have changed the subject and inquired after Erin or her mother or some other equally mundane element of her life (she liked the mundane).

                “Why do you keep coming to me?” The words were barely audible, as though he was terrified that she wouldn’t want to tell him (terrified that he wouldn’t like the answer). “You’ve got other friends. Why is it always me?”

                “Always you…” She sighed and sat up, pulling out of his embrace (he missed the feel of her immediately). “That’s a good way to put it, I think. It’s always you.” She gazed at him, pensive. “It’s always you. Why is it always you?”

                “Is that a rhetorical question?”

                Catherine giggled. “Yeah. It’s just… It’s always you. I wish I could figure out why it’s always you.”

                They were no longer talking about the same thing, and David picked up on that immediately. He wasn’t sure whether he should follow Catherine in the direction she just so happened to be wandering, or if he should push on and keep her from becoming entirely diverted.

                She made the decision for him. “Twig’s asked me the same thing. ‘Why is it always David?’”

                “What?” His brow furrowed in confusion. “I don’t understand.” Did Catherine go home every night and give Twig a detailed account of her time away?

                Did they ever bicker over him?

                It was a startling thought, and David immediately hoped that she would somehow answer this question, somehow assure him that he’d never been a cause of one of the fights that drove her away.

                Though surely Twig knew better than to question this. This friendship, which David valued above everything else in his life. Which David would do anything to keep intact.

                “He worries about you. Thinks I’ve been spending too much time with you. I’ve fought with him about it once or twice.”

                Immediately, he cringed. Catherine noticed, and she reached out to grab his hand. “Hey, don’t look so miserable.”

                “Don’t look miserable? I’m part of the reason your home life is what it is, so why shouldn’t I look miserable?”

                “It’s not a good look on you,” she teased.  

                “Every look is a good look on me…”

                Again, she laughed—because kissing him was the only alternative, and she wasn’t going to kiss him.

                (Though in that moment, she wanted to. It was not the first time she’d wanted to.) 


	3. Chapter Two

                He was on a date. He was on a date, and while Catherine was really trying her best to be happy for him, she was finding it to be incredibly difficult. He’d been out with this particular woman several times, and while he had mused that she wasn’t someone he’d want to be committed to long-term, for the time being he was happy. She’d been fairly successful at making it seem like she was excited for him, but deep down she had a bit of a problem with it. (More than a bit of a problem with it.)

                Perhaps David’s date was the reason she was so tense. Maybe. Regardless of explanations, though, an argument erupted. Whether she or Twig started this particular shouting match, she couldn’t say. Unlike so many others, though, she was left with an overwhelming feeling of finality.

                She raced out of the flat, tears running down her face, already texting David. _Date over?_

                It was 8:45. Everything she knew about him assured her that his date would _not_ be over. (God, she hated the effect he had on women.)

                (The effect he had on her.)

                _Now it is._

                David had cut off his date for her.  Catherine wholeheartedly believed that she didn’t deserve this man in her life.

                He opened the door and she fell into his arms, face burrowed into his shoulder and her sobs muffled by his shirt. Immediately, he wound his arms protectively around her. “Catherine? What… what happened?”

                Nothing like this ever happened. She was reserved, and as far as her home life was concerned, for the most part she truly had kept him in the dark. She didn’t let herself cry in front of him, certainly not to this extent. This… this was different.

                “I told him I wanted it to be over.”

                (David’s heart leapt and he hated himself for it.) “You what?”

                She wrenched herself away and stepped further into his flat, wiping her eyes and sniffling. “I don’t know where it came from. I was… I just wanted to hurt him. Like he hurts me, every time he mentions…” The statement trailed off into nothing. Telling him that her statement was the equivalent of Twig _talking about him_ … she couldn’t do it.

                It just so happens that he filled in that particular blank on his own, but he ignored it and followed after her. “Is there anything… anything I can do?”

                “Anything…” She laughed, a deep, throaty laugh that affected David far more than he would have liked to admit. “Anything you can do?” (Oh, the things she wanted him to do.)

                But his gaze was so sincere. He was so concerned.

                He’d kicked a woman out of his flat because he understood, without even being told outright, that Catherine needed him.

                Under the circumstances, David should have seen it coming. When Catherine took a few timid steps in his direction, he probably should have recognized the look in her eyes (because on so many occasions, he’d imagined her looking at him with that exact look in her eyes). But he didn’t.

                She kissed him, and he was entirely stupefied.

                It didn’t take him very long to push past his initial bewilderment—somewhere around the time that she cupped his face in her hands, he began to kiss her back.

                They both understood how wrong this was. Catherine felt as if she’d sacrificed all of her self-respect; David wondered if she would ever be able forgive him for taking advantage of her. Doubtful (mostly because she didn’t see much of anything to forgive).

                Neither of them could recall quite when, but they both knew that at some point, this had become an inevitability. Perhaps it had always been inevitable.

                Only the necessity of breathing was enough to tear them apart. They paused, foreheads pressed together, both afraid to be the first one to fill the silence.

                “Sorry,” he breathed at last.

                Despite her best efforts to keep a straight face, she giggled. “Sorry? Interesting sentiment, considering that I’m the one who kissed you.”

                He shook his head. “No, it’s not that.”

                “Oh?”

                “I feel the need to apologize,” he said slowly, running his hands down her sides and resting on her hips. “Because I’m so eager to keep snogging you. Or…” David eyed her, looking her up and down with a smile on his face (a smile which made her heart melt). “Do anything else that happened to follow. And that’s not right of me. So I’m sorry. Because I hate myself for wanting you.”

                Catherine blushed. It’d been such a long time since she’d first gotten the urge to kiss him that finally fulfilling it felt… satisfying. He was being forward—almost uncomfortably so—but she was beyond caring. “Don’t hate yourself. I’m not worth you hating yourself. Especially—“

                “Especially?” he pushed, hope apparent in his eyes.

                She shook her head slightly (shook the thoughts out of her head) and turned away, crossing her arms defensively. “You’re my best mate. What if… how…” She faced him, but kept her distance. “I don’t want to have any regrets concerning you. Who’s to say it wouldn’t be wiser to remain just friends?”

                “That’s what you want?” She was silent for a few moments. “Catherine? Is that what you want?” When she didn’t answer, he closed the gap between them in seconds and kissed her again, this time far more determinedly. Her enthusiastic response prompted him to stop kissing her, to whisper, “Go home and talk to Twig.”

                Her eyes widened. “What?”

                “I’m tired of wanting a woman who’s already accounted for. Especially with the knowledge that she wants me too. And if that’s the case… talk to him.”

                Of course, it’s not that Catherine was trying to avoid an unpleasant situation. (She was definitely trying to avoid an unpleasant situation.) She just didn’t understand why it couldn’t wait until morning. She began to slide her hands up David’s torso, but he grabbed her wrists, holding her hands firmly against his cool skin—though tragically, with the intent to stop her, not to encourage. “If you don’t want me to hate myself, please…” He released her wrists and tugged at his shirt self-consciously, all too aware of the spaces her hands had so recently occupied. “Go home and get things settled before coming to me.”

                They parted with little more than a gentle peck on the lips, and assurances of much to come.

                Not long after she’d gone, David received a phone call from the woman he’d been seeing. As far as he was concerned, this would be as good a time as any to break things off with her, too.

                “Hello, Georgia. Sorry about that emergen— what? … Oh, I actually have something to tell you too. But you go first.”


	4. Chapter Three

                Catherine felt lighter than air. Intellectually, she understood that the full effects of what she had just done extended beyond allowing her to have a relationship with David. As it was, though, she couldn’t think of anything else. On her way to David’s flat, she positively floated along, basking in a glow that she hoped would never go away (that had to go away).

                She called when she was about a block away. “Up for some company?”

                “Ah…” He wavered for a few moments. “Yeah, I think it would actually be a very good idea for you to come by. Are you close?”

                “I’m waving at your doorman as we speak.”

                “Oh.” David paused again. “See you soon, then.”

                When he opened the door, David was smiling, but there was something not entirely genuine about his apparently cheerful demeanor. “Good morning, Catherine.”

                “Morning, David.” She stepped inside.

                He closed the door and turned to face at her; at the same moment, they both said, “I’ve got news.”

                They looked equally startled by the other’s revelation, both going silent immediately to ponder what this “news” could possibly be. At last, Catherine decided that she wanted to hear whatever David had to say. She gestured to him. “You go first.”

                “Right.” He frowned slightly, then grabbed her hand and led her over to his sofa. “Sit?”

                She did, struck with the first inkling that this was not going to be a _good_ conversation. “What’s happened, David?”

                For the first time in God knows how long, David opted to sit not beside Catherine, but across from her, and she noticed. That lingering glow of delight was fading fast.

                “I’ve been meaning to phone you for a few days now, but… I just don’t know quite what to say.”

                “So why don’t you go ahead and just tell me?”

                He stood up and started pacing back and forth, wringing his hands nervously. At last, he stopped and sat down once more. “Georgia is pregnant.”

                A strange rushing began in her ears as Catherine fell completely back to earth. She’d been imagining deadly illnesses, familial deaths, or a sudden necessity to move to the Australia. Somehow, this was worse than all of those put together. “She’s pregnant?” Catherine took a deep breath. “And I’m assuming she hasn’t… been with anyone else?”

                Under any other circumstances, David might have laughed at her sudden discomfort. As it was, he didn’t feel particularly up to laughing. “No. Just me. Just… just me.”

                “Just you. And what does that mean, then? For you?” (Not the question she wanted to ask, but it was easier than, “What does that mean for us?”)

                “It means…” He finally had to tear his gaze away from Catherine, because she was staring at him with an intensity—with an alarm—that he couldn’t handle. Instead, he became suddenly fascinated by his own carpeting. “Well, I intend to do the right thing, if that’s what you’re thinking. I… I owe her that.”

                She wasn’t sure how to react. Out of everything she wanted to be—rude, angry, sympathetic—she didn’t know what David expected. She didn’t know what he wanted, what he thought he deserved. What finally came out was, “I… I have to go.”

                “What?”

                Before she was entirely aware of what she was doing, she was already out of her seat and halfway to the door. “I’ve just got a thing, absolutely can’t be late…”

                David reached the door at the same time and stood in front of her, blocking the way. “That’s it? You pick up and leave?”

                “What did you expect?”

                “I…” He stammered over a response. “I don’t know. Maybe a row? Some snarky remark? _Something_. You’ve not said anything!”

                “That’s because I’ve got nothing to say. What does it matter to me, that you got some woman pregnant? It’s none of my concern, is it?”

                She held his gaze, challenging him to fight her.

                Instead, he stepped aside. “Go on, then.” She was halfway over the threshold before he said, “You never did tell me your news.”

                “Oh.” Catherine turned and looked at him coldly. “I’ve ended it with Twig. Though I don’t remember for the life of me why I was so eager to tell you.”

                She turned on her heel to leave, but he lunged forward and grabbed her wrist. “Oi! You think you can drop something like that on me and then walk away? Come back inside please, Catherine. We need to discuss this.”

                “I see no reason to discuss anything.”

                David took hold of her hands and clasped them tightly. He leaned forward until their faces were mere centimeters apart. “Just because you’re suddenly scared to speak your mind doesn’t mean I am. If I could pretend to believe that I mean nothing to you, I would. But I can’t. Please. _Come inside_.”

                “Come inside?” She shook her head, though everything about her expression indicated that she wanted nothing more than for David to bring her back into his flat (and not necessarily for the sake of discussion). “You want to ‘do the right thing,’ David. So there’s nothing to discuss.”

                He looked absolutely distraught. “You… You left Twig for me.”

                “No. I did it for me. You would have been a happy coincidence.”

                “A happy coincidence?” David let her hands fall from his grip, but now she didn’t turn away. “Is that all I am to you? ‘If we’d been single at the same time, it would have been a happy coincidence’?”

                Catherine brought a hand up to his cheek. “Don’t be so ridiculous. It’s just… that’s all that _this_ can be. To either of us.”

                “Come inside.” he whispered. “Please, come inside.”

                “Why? Why postpone the inevitable?”

                “Because I don’t want to live with a ‘what if’ all my life. And neither do you.”

                She wished, more than anything, that he didn’t know her so well… because then she might have been able to lie and say _no_. 


	5. Chapter Four

                Some time ago, Catherine subconsciously made the decision to simply _stop_ being introspective. She stopped thinking about the state that her life was in because she couldn’t face the mess that she’d become.

                Breaking things off with Twig was intended to provide her with a sense of clarity. After that, she was supposed to understand exactly what it was that she wanted. Those things that she wanted were going to be attainable. And then, once she attained them, she was going to be happy. She was determined to believe that she _would_ be happy.

                After a few months, she had come to accept the absurdity of her expectations.

                It had been more difficult than she initially expected for her and Twig to come to a decision about Erin, and the resulting disagreements had caused their vaguely amiable break-up to become decidedly less cordial.

                David was with somebody else; this knowledge practically tore Catherine apart on a daily basis. 

                And she was having trouble finding any work that was more than a one-off on some television program.

                Essentially, her life was far from becoming what she wanted.

                “I need to get control of my life,” she told David one evening.

                They were in the middle of dinner—in the middle of a restaurant—and David was in the middle of taking a bite of his food. He paused and looked up at her, startled. However, he did his best to take the abrupt subject change in stride. “You think you’re out of control?”

                “I do.”

                He swallowed his food and gestured to her with a hand. “Go on then, how do you intend to put yourself in a position that allows you some control?”

                After a moment’s pause, she sighed and her shoulders sagged. “I’ve no idea.”

                “Well,” David leaned forward and settled his chin in his hand. “Figuring that out might be a good place to start, don’t you think?”

                Catherine scowled. “Don’t patronize me, please.”

                “I’m not!” he exclaimed. “Just… it seems like you haven’t thought it out. Do you know what it is that makes you feel so out of control?”

                _Yes,_ she thought to herself. _You. You’re the reason my life is this way._ She didn’t say that, though. Instead, she shrugged and said, “Everything.”

                “Everything?”

                “Everything.”

                “Everything…” David gazed at her fondly. “For someone carrying the weight of the world on her shoulders, you do it quite well.”

                In place of a response, Catherine reached across the table and placed her hand over David’s. He swallowed, and seemed unsure about how to react to her touch when they were sitting in public. After a quick glance about the room, he flipped his hand over and they linked their fingers together.

                They ate in silence for a couple of minutes, hands still joined. David was the first one to fill the silence. “I’d like to work with you again.”

                “Doing what?” Catherine wasn’t quite sure if he was being sincere, but he’d voiced a thought that had occurred to her countless times over the past couple of weeks—she wanted to work with him again. Desperately.

                “What’s it matter? ‘S long as it’s with you.” The sincerity of the statement made her flush and look away. “You act like that’s surprising.”

                “Perhaps a little.”

                He brushed his thumb across her palm, her wrist, the back of her hand. “Don’t ever be surprised by how much I l—how much I care about you.”

                Catherine pretended not to catch his slip-up. “I’ll try to keep that in mind.”

                They kept the subject light for the rest of the meal, during which time their fingers remained continually intertwined. They bickered over the bill, and while David allowed Catherine to give him twenty quid, he shoved it into her pocket when she wasn’t paying attention.

                As they walked down the road, he reached for her hand once more, and she clung to him gladly.

                “You want to know what I miss?”

                “Tell me,” she said with a small smile.

                “I miss doing Shakespeare. He was one of the reasons I became an actor, you know. I thought he was brilliant.”

                She giggled slightly. “The first Shakespeare I read was _Much Ado About Nothing_ , and when I was younger I felt certain that I’d play Beatrice some day.”

                “I could see you as Beatrice.”

                “Could you?”

                David grinned. “Definitely. That’s a show I would pay to see. Though of course, they need to pick a phenomenal Benedick.”

                “But what does one really need to play Benedick phenomenally?”

                “He’s a very complex character!” David exclaimed. “There are different facets of his personality. You need a Benedick who will work best with your Beatrice.”

                “I see. And you have someone in mind?”

                “Perhaps.”

                Catherine stopped in her tracks. David would have continued walking if not for her tightening grip on his hand. As it was, he paused and turned to face her. “What?”

                “Is this your way of saying that you would like to be the Benedick to my Beatrice?”

                “Are you offering?”

                “Oh, certainly not. This is simply hypothetical.”

                People kept walking past them and giving them puzzled looks, so David pulled Catherine along. “Then hypothetically, yes.”

                “Good. Then tomorrow, we’re making some calls.”

                “Not tonight?”

                She shook her head. “I’ve got other plans for what we’re doing tonight.”


	6. Chapter Five

                That night, Catherine and David went up to her flat and went through the motions. They went through the motions of friendship, sipping tea and chatting as they sat a respectable distance apart on Catherine’s sofa. Then their bodies came just a bit too close and they went through the motions of lovers, tumbling across Catherine’s floor and into her bed. And they went through the motions of a true couple when David wrapped his arms around her waist and they curled up together to fall asleep.

                As they were drifting off, it was Catherine who broke the spell. “’I would never be a part of an affair,’ David.”

                The statement was so jarring that it woke David up completely. “What?”

                “Do you remember when I said that?”

                He pulled away and sat up, switching on the lamp on his side of the bed. “No, actually. No I don’t. Care to remind me?”

                It seemed as if Catherine hadn’t been planning on turning this into an extended conversation, but she mimicked David and also sat up with a soft sigh. “That day during _Doctor Who_ when I asked you about affairs, I said that. ‘I would never be part of an affair.’ There’s very little that I remember as vividly as I remember that.”

                “Oh.” He cleared his throat. “Why exactly are you bringing this up now?”

                “Because that’s what this is, isn’t it?” She looked at him, and she looked so desperate—desperate to hear him contradict her, desperate to be told she’d done nothing wrong. “I’ve never allowed myself to think of it that way, but… that’s what this is.”

                David wanted to do something reassuring, but he got the impression that if he tried to so much as touch her arm, she would shy away. So he did nothing. “I’d like to note that you can’t actually state what ‘this’ is.”

                “Affair,” she whispered. As soon as she said it once, she gained a strange feeling akin to courage, and began to raise her voice. “Affair. _Affair_. You’re having a fucking _affair_. With me. You’re engaged to someone but you’re here anyway, and that means that you’re having an affair with me.”

                “Who’s to say she’s not the one I’m having an affair with? You’re the one I’ve got stronger feelings for.”

                She scoffed. “Right, how many times have you reassured yourself by saying that? Is that how you can fall sleep at night? Besides,” she added with a smirk. “I’d like to note that you can’t actually state what those ‘stronger feelings’ are.”

                “Don’t make me say it,” he murmured. “You know without my having to say it. Hell, I think you knew before I even knew. What could possibly be gained—“

                “What harm could it do?”

                “That word carries the weight of a lot of promises I’ll never be able to keep.”

                Catherine scowled and made a point of looking away from him. “When did I ever tell you I expected any promises? For someone so quick to sleep with a woman he’s not engaged to, you certainly do seem noble.”

                “You’re not just some woman,” David insisted, grabbing a hold of her at last. As he expected, she pulled away. “I know you know that.”

                Instead of responding, Catherine stood up and pulled on her dressing gown. She began pacing back and forth across her floor, staring at her feet. David had just begun to feel concerned that she might simply not say anything, when she finally stopped and looked him straight in the eye. “I am defying every expectation for myself that I ever had. I have sunk lower than I believed I could sink. And you want to know why, David? I don’t need to tell you, but I’ll say it anyway: it’s you. Because my life was easy before you. Things made sense before you. And then for a while nothing made sense unless I was with you, but now the fact of the matter is that _nothing_ makes sense, and that’s your fault too. You might be able to avoid your guilt, but I’ve reached a point where I just can’t avoid mine. I don’t even know if I’m guilty about hurting Georgia or hurting myself. Probably both, I suppose.  But that doesn’t matter. What matters is that by my own standards, I’ve sacrificed every ounce of my self-respect. And you’re just going to sit there and talk about promises? I don’t give a fuck about promises; I just want you to be willing to say that you love me. I want to know that I gave up my self-respect for something—for someone—that’s worth it. You talk about things that I know, things you don’t ‘need’ to tell me. I think you have too much confidence in my confidence.”

                As she spoke, tears began to well up in her eyes and then began to fall. When she finished her speech, she spun around and dropped onto the bed by David’s feet, curling into herself as she let out a heart-wrenching sob.

                Instead of saying anything, he just waited as her breathless sobs slowly diminished into silence. He got the impression that patience was his best course of action—and with Catherine, he was used to being patient, so he figured he could manage.

                Finally, he whispered, “I fucking hate love.”

                Catherine straightened up slowly, turning to look at him with damp, red eyes. “Why?”

                “Because look at what it’s doing to us. Look at what it does to everyone. Can you honestly say that you’re _happy_ right now?”

                “I…” Her voice wavered. “I am happy. Not _now_ , but… I wouldn’t be in this position right now if you didn’t make me overwhelmingly happy. I may have sacrificed every ounce of my self-respect, but I don’t believe—I refuse to believe that I’ve sacrificed my happiness.”

                All of a sudden, a grin lit up David’s features. He crawled across the bed toward Catherine and wrapped his arms around her neck, burrowing his face in her hair. He breathed in deep and whispered, “I do love you. I love your outlook on life and I love your sincerity and I love that you insist on doing what makes you happy.”

                She felt breathless as she turned into his arms, allowing herself to be completely enveloped. “I love you too.”

                Together, they crawled back under the covers. Catherine once again allowed David to wrap his arms around her waist, and they curled up together to fall asleep.

                After some time, he heard Catherine whisper, “This is not an affair.” And it took everything in him to not give any indication that he was still awake. It was all he could do to not let her hear as he cried himself to sleep.


	7. Chapter Six

                Catherine lived for _Much Ado_ , for the rehearsals and all the press releases and television appearances. She spent a great deal of time assuring herself that David was not her true focus (he was). David was aware of this, but was careful not to say anything to affirm his awareness; he was under the impression that drawing any more attention to it would leave Catherine utterly distraught. Aside from Catherine’s own feelings, if David acknowledged her motivation, he’d have to acknowledge his own.

                Their relationship became one increasingly comprised of nuance. They rarely conversed, and when they did each statement was clouded with hidden meanings, things they were afraid to say—be it because of their surroundings, or because of their own uncertainty. For the most part it was just touches—a brush of fingers against an arm, a gentle bump as they crossed paths, a stolen kiss behind a curtain under the dark shift lights—that indicated what they were thinking, that revealed their true intentions.

                Neither of them could say it (as with most things), but they longed for the days of being just _best friends_. They longed for the days when it was easy to sit beside each other, when silence wasn’t a sign of timidity but one of comfort. It didn’t matter that they had harbored feelings for one another; maybe, just maybe, it would have been just one of those things that they could have gotten over and forgotten, something to contemplate on sleepless nights as a ‘what if’, an ‘if only’. Catherine believed that she could have been happy as David’s ‘what if’. David was certain that he would have been content as an ‘if only’.

                On the night of their final dress rehearsal, they both lingered longer than everyone else. David knew to remain from the way Catherine clung to his hand a few moments too long after their rehearsal of the final curtain call. He’d squeezed her hand, and she’d known he would oblige.

                He found her in her dressing room, still not out of the dress that she wore for the final scene of the play. Catherine directed a smile his way and said, “Hello David. Mind staying for a moment to chat?”

                “Of course not.” Though these days, he never really knew what Catherine meant when she told him she wanted to ‘chat’.

                Especially when she strode forward and turned her back to him, saying, “Lovely. I’ll just change first. Unzip me, please?” Because ‘chatting’ was immediately the last thing on his mind. He reached up, eased the zipper down, feeling certain that wherever his mind was going, hers was certainly traveling down a significantly different path. He thinks of the time, so long ago, when he wouldn’t have had to wonder what she was thinking because by this point she would have told him already.

                His fingers grazed Catherine’s skin around the small of her back, and while she felt it, while it sent a shiver down her spine, she pulled away and retreated to her bag, desperate for a moment of safety and certainty. “Do you feel ready?” she said as she stepped out of the dress and into her trousers.

                “For the play?”

                She glanced at David with a smile as she reached into her bag to get her shirt. “Yes, the play. What else would I be talking about?”

                He couldn’t tell if she was toying with him or not. “Yes, I think so. You never really know until you’re on stage, though.” David was not there to make small talk, and she heard the irritation in his voice, although she chose not to acknowledge it.

                Instead of replying, Catherine moved toward him and reached up, adjusting the collar on his shirt. He looked into her eyes and swallowed, waiting for a sign of where she was going with this and what her intentions were, but she remained maddeningly aloof as she said, “Let’s sit down.”

                They eased onto a sofa in the corner, sitting on opposite sides, and David struggled to take it seriously—he couldn’t, not when just the night before, they had been doing _very different_ things on that couch. He couldn’t, not when Catherine was behaving as though they had suddenly reverted to some past part of their relationship, to a nearly _Runaway Bride_ -degree of formality between them.

                “Oh, can I offer you anything to drink?”

                His eyes turned dark at the question. “Are you just fucking with me? I feel like you’re about to tell me a relative died. I’d say you’re about to break up with me, but that’s not possible, is it? Since we’ve never been together in the first place.”

                “No, you’re quite right.” Catherine’s voice was devoid of all emotion, and he observed with sudden clarity how terrified she looked.

                Immediately, David’s tone changed. “What are you not saying, Catherine? I’m tired of having to guess at everything that you’re thinking. Talk to me.”

                “I don’t know quite how to say it.”

                He scooted closer to Catherine, taking her hands and holding them between his own. “So just say it.”

                “What are we doing?”

                “In… in which context?”

                “Long-term. You and me. This. Us. Don’t you think it’s time to figure this out?”

                David’s eyes widened. “Oh.” He released her hands. “Yes. Okay.”


	8. Chapter Seven

                Catherine had been working up the nerve to do this for quite some time; it had always just been a matter of when, and how. Judging from David’s reaction, she got the impression that even if the thought hadn’t truly occurred to him, he had been expecting it.

                Once that was over with, though, once she’d said that it _needed_ to be discussed, she had no idea where to go. She’d never been in this situation (never imagined herself as being one to be in such situations). “I really hate to ask,” she blurted. “It’s just…”

                “No, you’re right. It’s time we discuss this—we’ve both been putting it off for a long time, I think.”

                “Sometimes I lie awake at night, wondering if we’re still going to be doing this five, ten years from now. Not regularly, mind you, but I wonder if you’ll show up at my door if I’ll still welcome you in as though it’s nothing.”

                “Oh?” David got the impression that she had more to say, so he wasn’t going to interrupt, but he wanted her to know that he was genuinely listening.

                She nodded. “I’ve said this before, but it’s worth repeating: I’ve never been able to see myself as someone who would have an affair. If my twenty-year-old self saw me now, I think she would be ashamed to see what I’m doing. And I don’t want to wake up ten years from now, look at your empty space in my bed and wonder what you’ve gone home to tell your wife _this_ time.”

                “I… I don’t want that for you either. I want you to be happy, and I sometimes worry that I’m limiting your happiness somehow by… what am I even doing, Catherine? Am I leading you on?”

                “Perhaps a little bit.” She said it with a sad smile, and David had to look away as she continued. “Right now, though, you do make me happy. That is, when you’re not driving me mad.”

                “Shove off.” He still wasn’t looking at her, but he managed to smile slightly before his expression became neutral once more. “Does that mean that you want this to end?” Whatever she considered ‘this’ to be (because David certainly had no idea).

                There was an extended period of silence between them. She was so unresponsive that it prompted him to look up and meet her eyes, but he was patient and waited in silence. “No. But yes.”

                “‘No. But yes.’ Right, Catherine, I’m going to need a bit more than that.”

                “Not now. Because like I said, right now you make me happy. But I think we should acknowledge that there needs to be an end. And…”

                “And?” He finally harnessed the courage to grab her hands again, and he did so.

                Catherine looked at him, eyes earnest. “I don’t want to be shagging a married man. I’ve sacrificed so many of my principles but I really… I can’t let myself do that. I can’t do that.”

                “I understand.” He didn’t want to understand. He wanted to be clueless so that he could object, so that he could insist that he loved her and wasn’t that enough? But really, it was the love that made it all so complicated (just another thing on his list of things he didn’t want to understand).

                In lieu of a response, Catherine released David’s hands and settled against his side. He instinctively put his arm around her shoulder, and she reached up to take his hand once more. They leaned their heads together and let out a simultaneous sigh.

                He was afraid to ask, but eventually he knew he had to break the silence. “When?”

                “Closing night.” She cleared her throat and managed to raise her voice so that he could actually hear her. “I was thinking closing night.”

                David chuckled darkly in her ear. “You really have been thinking about this for some time.”

                “As have you.”

                “Maybe so.” He nuzzled her neck gently. “Don’t tell anyone, though. Must maintain a manly demeanor.”

                He expected her to tease him, to make some sort of joke about his manhood, but she did not. Instead, she said, “Who do I have to tell?”

                And that, that made his breath catch in his throat. “Don’t say that. I know what you mean, but… don’t say that.”

                “I didn’t—”

                “I know.”

                “But—”

                David silenced her with a kiss, a desperate kiss that made him wonder if this could ever really end completely, if they would ever actually be able to say goodbye. When he pulled away, she took a gasping breath as he said, “I know. Please don’t apologize.”

                “I’m sorry,” she whispered. Defiantly. A smirk on her face.

                “How sorry?”

                Catherine looked at him and considered, for a moment, the fact that their conversations always returned to teasing, to flirting, to jokes, always seemingly too soon. Nothing between them could remain serious for long.

                She kissed him. She indicated precisely how sorry she was.

                Their mental clocks ticked down towards doomsday.


	9. Chapter Eight

                They rarely acknowledged the agreement to which they had come. Catherine referred to it once, vaguely and off-handedly, as they were eating lunch one day before a performance: “I’m going to miss this.” And David, David paused. He stared at her for a moment, processing her words.

                “ _This_? What are you implying?”

                She looked at him, a deer in the headlights, and he realized she had not intended to say that to him, had not wanted him to know what she perceived as inevitable. But because she _had_ said it, she answered honestly. “Do you really think that we’ll be able to—”

                “Do you really not?” That hurt him, although he didn’t say so (couldn’t say so). Instead of saying so, he shook his head, he said, “Never mind. That’s not a conversation for now—we’ll talk about it later.”

                They didn’t talk about it later, and Catherine very pointedly said nothing more about their very questionable future.

                From that moment on David couldn’t look at her quite the same way, because he knew, then, that she couldn’t see herself spending time with him if none of that time was spent in bed. And he hated how much that bothered him.

                He didn’t say anything, of course. In fact, as they worked their way through June, through July, he and Catherine began to say less and less, even as they spent more and more time in each other’s company. It brought to David’s mind a line of Catherine’s from oh so many years ago, and he craved the courage necessary to turn to her some night and say, “We talk all the time, but we don’t say anything.”

                Before, a great deal of their communication had been silent, but now there was no communication at all.

                They went back to Catherine’s dressing room each evening after a show, but that had become a habit, more than anything else.

                She felt that everything about them was little more than a habit.

                One evening around the beginning of August, David and Catherine retreated to their own dressing rooms after going out to the stage door, as they always did. David lingered in his room for ten minutes, allowing time for the last of their cast mates to pack up and go home.

                Catherine was expecting him, but when he arrived she was sitting on her sofa in the middle of a phone call, so he grabbed a chair and pulled it closer, sitting a few feet from her. As though they were just two mates having a friendly chat after doing a show. They liked to keep up that particular façade for as long as possible.

                He didn’t pay particularly close attention to Catherine’s side of the conversation, instead opting to watch her expression, a cute little quirk to her lips that made David want to lean forward and kiss her—which he couldn’t do, of course, not when she was on the phone. And since she didn’t bother to get out of the conversation when he arrived, he could tell that it was important.

                When he glanced up from her lips, he saw that she was watching him, watching him watching her, and he grinned.

                They maintained eye contact for the duration of her conversation, and finally, finally, she said goodbye before tossing her phone aside, in the general direction of her bag. It landed perhaps a foot away, on the floor.

                “What was that about?” David asked almost immediately.

                Catherine shrugged and crossed her arms. “Maybe something, maybe nothing.” At the sight of a frown developing on David’s face, she leaned forward and rested a hand on his knee, looking at him earnestly. “Don’t look at me like that. I’m just trying to be cautious until things are decided. You know how it is.”

                He dropped the subject, but he pulled back from her touch.

                “Are you really going to be like that?”

                David knew that his irritation was irrational, but he didn’t want to admit that his anger went beyond the fact that she wouldn’t share one piece of information, and in fact extended all the way to the fact that she refused to tell him much of anything. All she ever seemed willing to do was shag him. He didn’t need (or want) extended, heart-to-heart talks. But she was giving him essentially nothing, and even he needed more than that.

                With that thought in mind, he lunged forward and kissed her hard.

                This was clearly not the reaction that Catherine had expected, as evidenced by the fact that her hands flailed about in space for perhaps ten seconds before she reached out to grab his waist and pull him. He let himself drop on top of her, straddling her, and when sitting in her lap he was far taller than her—to the point of discomfort, to the point where his neck and his back were certainly going to be sore the next morning but he didn’t care enough to make them shift, not then.

                She unbuttoned his shirt, but once it was open she made no attempts to remove it, her hands instead venturing toward his belt. David, on the other hand, insistently pulled away so that he could pull her shirt up and over her head, discarding it behind him. At this moment, Catherine pushed him off of her lap and got up, shimmying out of her jeans. Standing over David—David with his belt undone and shorts unzipped, with his shirt still hanging open—she wore that same expression, that same small smile which had driven him mad while she’d been talking not that long ago. She watched him shimmy out of his shorts and kick them away.

                And then it was David who reached out to grab her waist, who settled her onto his lap as he snogged her senseless, as he did everything in his power to push away all of his anger and frustration. He pulled off her bra and kissed along her breasts as she ran her hands through his hair. His hands made their way to her hips as if of their own accord, groping at her knickers and attempting to push the material aside.

                Very abruptly, he stopped. He pulled away and leaned back and looked her in the eye—looked her in the eye because if he looked anywhere else he would struggle to say what he had to say.

                “I was going to talk to you tonight.”

                “About what?” She whined. Actually whined. He kind of liked that, making her whine.

                “About how we never do anything but shag.”

                Catherine said nothing. David began to kiss her again.


	10. Chapter Nine

                “I think I might go home right after the show tonight.”

                For a moment, Catherine felt that she must have been hearing things. But no. David had appeared next to her as she waited in the queue for the loo during intermission, bouncing back and forth on the balls of his feet.

                She always thought it was adorable when he did that, but she didn’t find it adorable right then. “You what?” She spoke the words through gritted teeth. Even though no one was paying close attention to them—perhaps people were actively _not_ paying attention—the two of them were still in a crowded hall, the cast and crew shuffling about in preparation for the rest of the show.

                “I’m going to go home right after the show. Olive hasn’t been sleeping well the past few days; I’m worried about her.”

                “You’re telling me this right now because you know I wouldn’t make a scene.”

                David squinted at her. “I what?”

                She pointedly turned away from him. “Never mind. Go ahead and go home.”

                He glanced at the clock on the wall above them. They had ten minutes before they had to be back at the stage.

                Without another word, he grabbed her wrist and pulled her away from the loo, dragging her to his dressing room and pulling her inside. She grabbed for the door and pulled it closed automatically, and indication of the number of times they had done this under very different circumstances. “You need to stop this.”

                “Stop what, David?”

                “Oh, you know. You won’t tell me anything! You clearly want to yell at me, but you say that I knew you wouldn’t make a scene? I know that you’re perfectly willing to make a scene, Catherine, except that you don’t want to tell me what’s bothering you.”

                Catherine scowled. “You want to know what’s bothering me?”

                “Yes!”

                “You stroll up to me, you matter-of-factly inform me that you’re going to go home directly after the show tonight. No conversation, no discussion, you just _tell_ me. What exactly made you think that was okay? I’m not some whore you can just dismiss whenever you like. I have genuine feelings for you—feelings I’m fucking tired of having—and I thought you felt the same way about me but there’s no fucking way that you do. Not if you think it’s okay to treat me like that. I’d like to tell you that I don’t give a fuck whether you go home or not. I’d like to, but I can’t because we’re closing in two weeks and that’s scaring me to death. But the least you could do is just… ask. The least you could do is maybe pretend that we’re on equal footing in this mess of a relationship.”

                After such a speech, David had no idea what to say. He couldn’t tell what she expected from him. With some hesitation, he said, “When you say that we’re not on equal footing, are you saying that I’m the one with more control?”

                “Yes.” As though it should have been obvious.

                “You’re the one who set a deadline. Who said it had to end at all.”

                “Because otherwise we would just carry on until you got bored. Until you decided that you could get rid of me.” Catherine paused and looked down, trying very hard to maintain her composure. “I wake up every morning, and one of the first things to occur to me is, ‘I wonder if he still loves me.’ Just now, when you so nonchalantly declared that you were going to just go home…”

                David’s eyes widened. “You thought that was some sort of affirmation that I was done with you.”

                She nodded. “Yes.”

                Before he could say anything else, there was a knock on the door. “David, are you in there? We’re starting in five minutes and everyone says they last saw Catherine with you. Is she here?”

                “Ah…” Catherine shook her head vehemently. “No. I thought I saw her going toward her dressing room, perhaps you should check there?” They heard footsteps retreating, and immediately they returned to their own little world. David grabbed her hands and held them tightly. “Don’t be daft, Catherine. I love you. Though life would be a hell of a lot easier if I didn’t.”

                “That doesn’t exactly make me feel any better.”

                “I wasn’t done! I was going to say… I don’t care about an easy life. Not if an ‘easy life’ means I don’t have you. And don’t you dare think for a second that I’ve somehow got the upper hand in this relationship. You and I both know you could walk all over me in a second. Understand?”

                She smiled and stood up on her tip toes, ever so gently pressing her lips to his. She was still clinging to his hands.

                “One thing?” He whispered the words against her lips.

                “Yes?”

                “You need to tell me when something is bothering you. You need to not be afraid to share. Although…” David paused and pulled away, regarding her carefully. “Please don’t feel the need to initiate innumerable heart-to-heart chats.”

                Catherine giggled. “Alright. I’ll do my best. You must tell me tomorrow if your presence helps Olive sleep.”

                “What? You mean…”

                “You’re going home tonight. We have two weeks, I think I can spare you for an evening.”

                He leaned close to Catherine, but only to reach for the handle on the door. Their faces were mere centimeters apart as he mused, “Now I feel like the whore.”


	11. Chapter Ten

                Like everyone else on stage, David and Catherine had tears in their eyes as they took their final bow. They looked at each other and their hearts were racing, but nowhere near as fast as their minds as they contemplated everything this night was and all of the changes it was to bring about.

                Almost as soon as they were off stage, David was pulling her out of view, into the shadows  as he pressed his lips to hers. “Congratulations on a stunning performance, Miss Tate,” he breathed.

                “And to you, Mr. Tennant.”

                “Well, yeah.” He shrugged this off. “I was alright. But _you_. You were on top form. I felt that I didn’t deserve to be Benedick, standing across from you.”

                Catherine looked up at him with sad eyes, then grabbed ahold of his tie to pull him into another kiss. Even though it was not an urgent kiss, she felt as though she was throwing herself into it with every fiber of her being, and David reciprocated. When she pulled away, she whispered, “You’ll always be my Benedick.”

                They parted to go to their own dressing rooms and change, and together they emerged from the stage door, all smiles. When someone asked for a photo with both of them together, David put his arm over Catherine’s shoulder and it was all he could do to keep from playing with her hair, or from pulling her into a kiss, or from doing anything else—anything worse—that he might regret doing in front of an audience.

                He managed to overcome the urge with the promise of later.

                When he arrived at her dressing room that night, Catherine was all packed up and ready to leave; she was bustling about the room, looking for anything she may have forgotten or misplaced.

                “Leaving so soon?” He meant for it to come out as a joke, but his tone of voice revealed his genuine confusion.

                She jumped at the sound of his voice, and turned to look at him. “Well, yes… Don’t you think we should be getting to the party?”

                David strode closer, holding her gaze. “ _Now_?”

                “Yes. Now. My car’s waiting, if you’d like to come with me.”

                “Now.” He scrutinized her, searching for any indication of what was going through her head. He found none. “Have you forgotten what tonight is?”

                Catherine shook her head. “Certainly not. I couldn’t possibly forget.”

                “Then what—”

                “I want you to come back to my flat tonight.”

                “Oh.” David grimaced. “But Georgia’s coming to the party. I don’t… I don’t have a reason to just not go home.”

                “So wait until she falls asleep. I just… I don’t want rushed sex in my dressing room. Of course, I also didn’t want to fall in love with a man who’s accounted for, but since I have…”

                He didn’t need for her to finish. He reached out and took her hand, and the two of them made their way out of the theatre and departed for the cast party.

                It made Catherine uncomfortable, how easily David slipped into the skin of a doting fiancé. As soon as they arrived, that is what he became; there were no clear similarities between her David and this one, and it made her wonder which one was a mask. The thought terrified her, even though she believed (she had to believe) that when he was with her, David was being genuine.

                She lost him in the crowd almost immediately, but when he was behaving as he always did around Georgia—when he was pretending? Or when he could stop pretending?—she didn’t particularly mind his absence.

                And without him by her side, Catherine found herself completely disinterested in the party. She chatted with anyone unable to detect her discomfort. She drank some cranberry juice (always cranberry juice). She tried to keep her eyes from scanning the room for David every five seconds.

                She chose to leave early because she kept scanning the room for David every five seconds.

                In the car on the way home, Catherine texted him, informing him that she was leaving. She got a response almost immediately, and wondered how he pulled himself away, wondered about the excuse he gave. _Give me an hour._

                It took him three, and when she opened the door he was panting, as though he had run the whole away. Under normal circumstances, Catherine would have made a joke, and they would have laughed—even though both of them would have known how much his tardiness certainly bothered her—but these were not normal circumstances, so she simply stepped aside to let him in.

                They made no effort to pretend that this was a friendly visit. Their hands were on each other immediately as they stumbled to her bed.

                As he pressed his lips to hers, he swore he loved her.

                Again, to her clavicle.

                After removing her shirt, he kissed her breasts, and his declaration of love continued.

                Catherine marked up his skin that night as she had never done before, scratching and biting and not caring because this was it, so she figured she may as well make him remember it just as much as she knew she would. David found it thrilling, and he repeated his words: “Fucking hell, I love you.”

                She couldn’t make up her mind whether to stop him or not.

                When he eased into her, they were silent. Catherine held his gaze and he seemed hesitant to break the spell.

                “Well, get on with it,” she said, the smallest hint of a smile on her face.

                David kissed the smile away.

                He came wordlessly, but made sure that when he brought Catherine to the edge, she was reciting a very colorful list of expletives about which she could later be proud.

                And then he pulled her into his arms. He kissed the spot where her jaw met her earlobe as he whispered the words once more, “I love you.”

                When she woke up in the morning, he was gone.

                She felt as though David was still there, still holding her close, and the thought brought her to tears.


	12. Chapter Eleven

                It was simpler than Catherine had expected. By no means was it _easy_ , but they began to phone one another up, to chat as they used to.

                David braved it first, although perhaps it would be a bit too courteous to say that he ‘braved’ it—that implies that he thought it through, when he in fact did it by accident.

                “David.”

                Her voice coming out of the phone was as much a shock to him as the call was to her. He glanced down at his mobile and realized that she was still on speed dial, and he had unintentionally called her instead of Georgia.

                Not that he could say this, of course. No, certainly not. So he did the only thing he really could do, and said the first thing that came to mind. “I’ve got a new business.”

                Silence on the other end. David wondered if it was too soon (if at all would be too soon), or if perhaps she would chastise him for, as always, diverting the subject from serious matters.

                “Oh yeah? What’s your new business?” She sounded happy. If she wasn’t, she was doing a good job of pretending.

                David had nothing new, nothing he hadn’t said to her before. “I’m making statues of religious icons.”

                She scoffed at this. “Oh, get off, there’s nothing new about that business.”

                The call ended soon after that. It left Catherine wondering whether he was just looking for an excuse to talk with her. He hoped that she didn’t think he intended to initiate anything once more. But that single call indicated to them both that they couldn’t _not_ talk.

                So David might phone Catherine as he was driving around, doing errands; she called him while she cleaned her apartment. At first they made any number of excuses, but those dropped away very quickly. It was understood that they missed each other, and they neither expected nor needed an excuse beyond that.

                One morning, she texted him: _Lunch?_

                With great hesitation, with great reservations, he responded in the affirmative.

                They agreed to meet at one of their old haunts. Catherine arrived first, and claimed their usual table near the back of the restaurant.

                He saw her sitting there, the light hitting her just right (though in his mind, the light was always hitting her just right), and his heart jumped into his throat.

                Very little actual conversation happened during that particular meal. For the most part, they basked in an opportunity to share each other’s company. When their knees bumped under the table, they looked at one another, startled and uncertain.

                David’s gaze was disconcerting and she decided to speak, because otherwise she got the impression that this friendly luncheon would become something else entirely. “Do you remember the day when you came in to my dressing room and I was on the phone?”

                “Was that the, ‘maybe something, maybe nothing’ conversation?” He had spent an embarrassingly extensive amount of time pondering over that ‘maybe something, maybe nothing’ conversation.

                She nodded. “I was talking to my agent.”

                “A job? That’s great!” Almost as soon as he said it, David realized that she was looking at him in a somber manner. What could possibly make this news not great?

                “They want me back on _The Office_.”

                He hadn’t sat face-to-face with Catherine for a month and a half, yet the prospect of her going to America and working on _The Office_ again terrified him. Not that he would say so. “For what? A two- or three-episode arc?”

                “Maybe. If things go well, they said they might make me a regular.”

                “Oh.”

                “Yeah.”

                She held his gaze, and he wasn’t sure what he could say. He was happy for her. He had no reason to complain. This was a great move for her career; a great move for her.

                It made David wonder if she had thought of him at all when making the decision to take the job. “Not to sound... I mean to say, was I…” Even if he was a reason for her leaving, he realized after the words came out that he didn’t want her to say so.

                “Yes.”

                “Oh.” She wanted to get away from him so desperately that she had to leave the continent entirely.

                Catherine saw the way his face fell, and she rushed to add, “You don’t understand. I just… I don’t trust myself around you, David.”

                “Not even now?”

                She shook her head. “The prospect of moving to LA and being thousands of miles away from you makes it worse.”

                Under his breath, David murmured, “So don’t move to LA.”

                “Don’t ask me to do that.”

                “Why shouldn’t I?”

                Gaze fixed on him, Catherine reached across the table and took hold of his hand. “When I don’t actually _have_ you, isn’t it quite pointless to choose you over LA?”

                David knew that she was right. He squeezed her hand and changed the subject.

                They left the restaurant together, and he offered her a ride home, as any gentleman might do. She accepted.

                As soon as they were in the car, he grabbed her hand. He did not look over at her, and she did not look over at him, but they clung to each other for dear life.

                Outside her building, he tried. He really tried. He tried to say goodbye, to say, “I’ll talk to you soon,” and to give her a hug. A nice, friendly hug.

                She kissed him or he kissed her and he decided that he didn’t trust himself around her any more than she trusted herself around him.


	13. Chapter Twelve

                “I don’t regret you,” Catherine remarked one day.

                She and David were relaxing in her bedroom, and this was the first time since Much Ado that either of them had chanced a direct mention of their relationship. “You say that like it’s a shock.”

                “It is a shock, a bit,” she said slowly. “I did regret it, for a long time. Or I thought I did. Remember how much easier life was when this was nothing but a, ‘what if?’”

                He chuckled darkly. “Aren’t we still mostly a ‘what if?’” He reached for her hand and they intertwined their fingers. “What if we could have had a chance? A real chance, mind you. I would have fought for a real chance.”

                Catherine wondered why he _didn’t_ fight for a real chance, but she went to great lengths to keep herself from questioning David with his bizarre sense of nobility. “I don’t know. It’s hard to think about that, to remind myself of what’s not possible.”

                “Would you have married me, if we had reached that point? Would you have made an honest man of me?”

                “I really don’t think I’m the marrying kind.”

                David’s gaze made her fidget. She would have said yes to him in a heartbeat, had he proposed, and she got the impression that he knew. No one saw through her like that. Not except him. It was always David.

                “I don’t regret you either,” he replied. “Never will.”

                “But—”

                “But?”

                “I hate that I can’t stop loving you.”

                At that, he rolled over onto his back and stared up at the ceiling, although he still held on to her hand. “Maybe once you go to America…”

                Catherine laughed, and neither of them chose to acknowledge the fact that such a response made very little sense, under the circumstances. “Do you really believe that?”

                He looked at her and she looked at him and he smiled sadly. “Not for me.”

                “Me, neither.”


	14. Chapter Thirteen

                Every morning as Catherine ate her breakfast, she stared down the wedding invitation. She contemplated it. She considered. She weighed her options and she went back and forth a million times on whether or not she should go.

                Because after all, this was David.

                But that was the whole problem—this was David. _Her_ David. The chances were slim to none that she’d be able to watch him promise himself to another woman for the rest of his life without bursting into tears. Granted, at a wedding it was doubtful that she would be the only one crying, but she knew that if she cried, David, at least, would know why.

                The deadline for RSVP’s came and went and she hoped against all hope that that would be the end of it.

                David called her that weekend and she knew her hope had been ridiculous in the first place. At the same time, she was vaguely hurt that he didn’t call her sooner.

                “Do you know what ‘RSVP’ stands for?”

                “Répondez, s’il vous plait.”

                “That was a rhetorical question. I’m making reference to the fact that we haven’t received your ‘répondez, s’il vous plait’.”

                 “David, that’s not quite how that phrase—”

                He groaned. “Are you coming to my wedding?”

                “I’m undecided.”

                “Undecided!” David began pacing back and forth in his kitchen, gesturing wildly with his free hand. “What’s there to be undecided about? You can expect good food, good company… I even requested that the caterer to supply their finest cranberry juice for the occasion.”

                She knew that he wanted her to laugh, but didn’t particularly feel like laughing. “I just… I don’t know. I’m thinking about it.”

                He lowered his voice, and his tone got softer. “Catherine, please. Stop thinking about it and just say yes. I hate the idea of you missing such an important moment in my life.”

                “I… oh, never mind.”

                “Catherine.”

                “Forget it.”

                “Catherine.”

                “David.”

                “Catherine.”

                “I’m serious, David.”

                “No, I’m serious. I thought we got past the point of censoring ourselves.”

                “I’m sorry if I’m reluctant to be a guest at the wedding of the man I love.” She paused, and David didn’t dare say anything, although he felt his stomach drop. “Besides, I’m leaving for America the next day.”

                “You’re _what_?”

                Catherine frowned. “My flight to LA will be leaving at 9 in the morning on the next day. Going to a wedding the day before would hardly be a good idea.”

                “Did you do this on purpose?”

                “Certainly not. That’s when they need me.”

                He didn’t believe this, but he decided that it wasn’t worth challenging her—not on that particular matter, at least. “I want you at my wedding. I won’t take ‘no’ for an answer.”

                “That’s a bit of a double standard, don’t you think?”

                “It is not!”

                “Don’t get so indignant about it.” With a sudden onslaught of determination, Catherine gained the confidence necessary to strut over to her refrigerator and remove the RSVP, tossing it in the general direction of the trash bin. She missed, and it landed between the bin and the wall. “If anyone deserves to be indignant here, it’s me. Do you ever take the time to think through your actions and the fact that on a regular basis, you shag a woman who is _not_ your fiancée? And do you realize that you’re asking this woman to come to your wedding even though you know that it will hurt her? Yet here you are, acting indignant when this woman expresses her reluctance.”

                “Because this woman is also my best mate and I want my best mate to be at my wedding.” David was still keeping his voice low, and Catherine wondered, briefly, whether he was calling her with Georgia in the next room, whether they were going through the full list of potential guests who hadn’t sent back their RSVP’s. Perhaps Georgia was wondering why he was talking in such a hushed voice or perhaps her mind was entirely elsewhere.

                “David, I just don’t think I can handle it.”

                “Leave early, then. I just don’t want to hear more excuses. Will you come?”

                “You’re not giving me much of a choice.”

                He sighed deeply. “You always have a choice. You have much more power over me than I do over you.”

                “You underestimate yourself.”

                “So do you.” She thought that maybe, just maybe, he was smiling. “Come. Please. Show up in a dress that makes every man in the room want to shag you. You can leave the party early if you need to get away.”

                Catherine bit her lip to suppress a grin. She crossed the room and picked the invitation up off the floor, dusting it off and setting it down on the counter. “Alright, David. You win. I’ll spend my last day in London at your wedding.”

                “I could hug you.”

                “You better hug me.”

                Before hanging up, David mumbled, “I love you.”

                She pretended that she didn’t hear.


	15. Chapter Fourteen

                Catherine isn’t crying. A majority of the other guests do have tears welling up in their eyes, but she is maintaining a surprisingly cool demeanor. Georgia is smiling and David is smiling and the sight makes Catherine wonder why she’s there.  She does not begrudge them their happiness, but she wishes she didn’t have to be present to witness it. It just makes things harder. She does not need to be reminded of what Georgia will have every day… of what she’ll never have again.

                John agreed to be her date and he is sitting beside her. Out of the corner of her eye, she notices that he keeps glancing over at her, trying to gauge her reaction. While neither she nor David ever told him about their affair, it doesn’t surprise her that he sees that there’s something there. She wonders if he thinks they’ve ever acted on their feelings.

Finally, his eyes make herr uncomfortable enough that she elbows him hard in the side and hisses, “Stop.”

He’s looking forward as he says, “Stop what?”

                She scoffs, but doesn’t answer.

                The ceremony ends and David and Georgia are kissing and Catherine can’t help it if she’s suddenly forgotten how to breathe. John intentionally ignores her reaction, and she is grateful. And as the two of them walk down the aisle together, David’s eyes land on Catherine for a split second—just long enough for her heart to leap into her throat, for long enough that she wants to scream. Now, John grabs her hand and squeezes it tightly until her breathing has returned to normal.

                As they stand up together and make their way to the door, John is still holding on to her hand. When she tries to pull away, he merely tightens his grip. “Catherine, hang on.”

                They fall to the back of the crowd, even as she half-heartedly gestures toward the happy couple, standing in the doorway and shaking the hands of the guests before they all make their way to the reception.

                “Why are you here?” he asks.

                She frowns. “David asked that I come. He’s my best mate…”

                “Catherine, stop.” They are drawing nearer and nearer to David and Georgia, and John has to lower his voice. “I see how you look at each other. I don’t know if anything ever happened between you, and frankly I don’t care, but I want you to be honest with me: why are you here?”

                “He asked me to come,” Catherine insists. She wishes she had a better reason, wishes that she had some rational explanation for her actions.

                “If David asked you to jump off a bridge…”

                “How good is his argument?”

                John stares at her. “You’re joking, yes?”

                “To a degree.”

                 “John! It’s so good to see you!”

                They’ve all plastered on smiles as they go through rounds of hand shaking and hugs and Catherine feels as though she could gag on the false sweetness of the ordeal.

                “I hope you two are coming to the reception,” Georgia gushes. With a glance at each other, Catherine and John nod, and Georgia’s smile gets wider. “Wonderful. We’ll absolutely have to catch up while we’re there.” This comment is directed entirely toward John, but Catherine doesn’t notice, because she is far too busy watching David stare at the floor.

                As they’re walking away, John mumbles, “Remind me again why you’re here?”

                She huffs indignantly. “We’ve got a reception to get to, John.”

                The reception is not much better. Catherine spends a great majority of her time talking with John, or with Adam, whom David was gracious enough to put at her table. She is careful to keep her eyes away from the wedding party’s table.

                Speeches happen, which Catherine ignores. She very politely sips her cranberry juice. John makes a comment about how she would be better able to handle this ordeal if she were drinking something stronger than cranberry juice, which prompted her to accidentally spill about half of that glass of cranberry juice onto John’s trousers.

                “You’re mature.” He leaves in order to clean himself up, and immediately Catherine regrets her actions because now John is gone.

                After about ten minutes, David and Georgia stand and together, they have their first dance. John is still missing and Catherine considers leaving, but before she has the chance Adam nudges her. “I know I’m not your first choice, but how about a dance?”

                She smiles—perhaps her first genuine smile all day—and nods. “I’d like that.” She takes his hand and he walks her out onto the floor, joining the already decent-sized crowd of other guests.

                “So, why are you here?” he asks, even over all of the chatter and noise on the dance floor.

                “Christ, you and John both… Regardless of whatever else there is between us, he’s still my best mate.”

                “Actually, I just meant that since you’re leaving tomorrow and all, you might be making last minute preparations. Although since you brought it up…" He raises his eyebrows and she flushes.

                With a glance around the room, she breathes, "Let's just dance, Adam, okay?" They do, for perhaps thirty seconds. Adam opens his mouth to speak, and she immediately silences him. "Don't push this, please."

                "I'm not pushing anything," he insists. "I was just about to make some remark about the size of the room and the miraculous number of couples we've been able to fit on the dance floor."

                Catherine scowls at him, and although he smirks, he doesn't say anything more.

                For about a minute, he doesn't say anything more.

                After a minute, it appears he can no longer maintain his composure. "But really, Catherine, I think it's worth addressing that—"

                "I don't understand why you _care_!"

                He smiles and looks around, searching for someone. When she follows his eyes, Catherine sees that he's watching Georgia and David, who are off on the other side of the room. "I don't care all that much. But you're getting flustered, and I like that. It takes quite a lot to get you flustered, you know. It's almost always him that gets you this way." He nods in David's general direction.  
                "But it's you right now."

                "Is it?" She pointedly looks away, and Adam sighs. "Thought so."

                Another silence falls between them, and this one lasts longer. Catherine breaks it, although she seems to be worried about the opening for conversation that she's providing. "You probably think I'm pathetic, don't you?"

                "No, I don't. I think you need to figure out what you're doing."

                "Why do you think I'm going to LA?"

                "To get over him?"

                Catherine grimaces. "If only. No, I'm just hoping that I can forget for a little while."

                "Am I really that forgettable?"

                The voice behind her makes Catherine jump, and when she turns to look at David she feels almost certain that she's imagining things. She briefly considers the fact that Adam didn't alert her to David's presence, but quickly becomes distracted with thoughts of how David is standing here with her instead of elsewhere with his wife.

                He notices Catherine looking around for Georgia, and quickly says, "John came and stole my date, so my thinking was that I'd steal his… Although it seems like you've already done so, Adam."

                Despite the fact that she tugs hard on his arm in a desperate plea to make him stay, Adam pulls himself out of Catherine's grip and backs away with a small smile and a shrug, saying, "Go ahead. I was just about to get a drink."

                And then he rushes away, leaving David and Catherine standing alone in the crowd of people.

                "So, would you like to dance?"

                She looks at him, at the hand that he is offering her, and she scowls. "I don't suppose I've got much of a choice."

                "How many times do I have to tell you that you've got a choice before you'll believe me?"

                "At least once more." She accepts his hand. "Did you ask Adam to do that?"

                "To do what?"

                Catherine squints off in the general vicinity of where Adam retreated. She can't tell if David's question is genuine, but she also has no other true explanation for what Adam supposedly might have done. She just feels as though he did _something_. "He talked with me," she says at last.

                "Ah yes, I most definitely instructed him to talk with you. It was quite the diabolical plan, actually."

                "I knew it."

                Silence for a few moments. "But actually, if I had asked him to do something, theoretically, how would you feel about that?"

                "Depends on what you asked him to do."

                "I asked him to make sure you didn't leave."

                Catherine breathing becomes more shallow as she processes this. "And what would you have done, had I left?"

                "Well, you know, we would have temporarily put a stop to the party… we would have all had a good cry, of course." When he sees that she is just rolling her eyes, David adds, "I wanted to have a chance to say goodbye. I figured you'd probably leave without giving me that chance, if you had your way."

                This is true, but she doesn't say so. "You asked Adam to keep me here so you could say goodbye?"

                After a miniscule pause, David says, "Yes."

                "Go on then."

                "Are you really that eager to leave?"

                "Does that really surprise you?"

                He doesn't answer, and after considering him for some time, Catherine turns on her heel and weaves between the other guests, making her way to the door.

                David follows her. She expected this, and when she gets outside, she waits for him, standing at the top of the stairs and shivering in the brisk winter air. As soon as he's through the door—and he must be even colder than she is, having shed his jacket sometime during the reception, whereas at least she's wearing a coat—he says, "Where do we stand now, Catherine?"

                "What do you mean, 'where do we stand'? Don't you remember what I said? No married men. I've broken so many of my own expectations that I don't think I could live with myself—"

                "I know that. I remember. That wasn't my question. _Where do we stand_? Am I going to hear from you? Can I talk to you? If I tried to phone you, would you ignore me? If I'm in LA, can I visit you? If you're back home, will you call me and suggest that we go out for lunch so we can catch up? Or do you want to leave here now and never hear from me again?"

                Catherine has several very different answers between which she's teetering, and looking David in the eye—hopeful David, pleading David—she knows what he wants to hear.

                She can't say what he wants to hear, but she can't bring herself to tell the truth. "I… I don't know. I don't think I'll know for a while."

                It looks, for a moment, as though he might challenge her. It looks as though he'll call her out and expect her to explain everything.

                He does not. He sighs. He says, "Okay," and leans forward to give her a hug. She accepts this with great fervor, holding him close—not as close as she wants, but as close as she dares hold him—and breathing him in. She absorbs the feel of him, and memorizes the moment.

                As though she has no control over her own speech, she finds herself mumbling, "I love you," into his ear before they pull apart. He pretends that he doesn't hear, and instead says, "Have a good flight."

                "I'll try," she says with a half-hearted smile.

                Catherine has almost reached the bottom of the stairs when he calls after her, "I want you to call me when you get settled in. Will you promise?"

                "I'll try," she says again.

                He wants to believe her.

                When she is finally out of sight, he retreats back to the reception and heads straight for the bar. He is going to get pissed. He's going to get pissed because there is no way he can really believe her. He's going to get pissed because, since he won't be getting over it any time soon, he might as well try to forget for a little while.

                Even though Catherine is most certainly not forgettable. 


End file.
